Many a moment at rock club, record store, dive bar, and web forum has been wasted arguing over what the word "indie" means any more, or ever meant-- whether it refers to a style, an ethic, a condition of artistic and financial freedom, or some combination of these factors (and others). Be that as it may, it seems fair to suggest that Lost Channels, the fourth full-length from Toronto-based Tony Dekker's Great Lake Swimmers project, sounds less "indie" than any previous Swimmers record. There's a degree of polish to the 12 tracks here that we haven't heard before from Dekker, though this feels less like the product of any meddling on the part of label Nettwerk-- a company that has worked with Canadian megastars Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, not to mention Coldplay-- than a natural progression for a one-time solo endeavor that has attracted an orbit of like-minded co-conspirators over the years.
Along with the polish, it's the efforts of these co-conspirators that help make Channels feel like something "more" than an indie record. Some fuss has been made over the exotic locales where the album was put to tape-- abandoned grain silos, churches, historic sites, even an old castle situated on the St. Lawrence Seaway-- but the real story here is what was recorded and how well it all comes together. Chiming guitars dosado with warm flecks of banjo and light washes of electric organ in a series of dances that are dense in their construction but still deft in their execution. Electric and acoustic instruments mingle so effectively that it seems moot to make that distinction between them. Indeed, tracks such as the winning opener "Palmistry", "Pulling on a Line", and "She Comes to Me in Dreams" call to mind the more baroque moments from another act that did a pretty darn good job honing itself into something radio-friendly: R.E.M. (think Out of Time standouts "Half a World Away" and "Losing My Religion").
However the Swimmers have a ways to go if they're ever to scale the heights of Michael Stipe & Co. (and one doubts that's really what they're aspiring to at this point, anyway). Plainly put, the songwriting here just isn't all big-league yet. Quieter tracks like "Everything Is Moving So Fast", "Stealing Tomorrow", and "Concrete Heart" reveal that Dekker still has some room to grow as a lyricist. With the tempos slowed and the layers of instrumentation largely stripped away, there's little left to hide the clunkiness of the former track's chorus ("Everything is moving so fast/ I am unlimited") or the awkwardness of the latter song's central metaphor (which involves Toronto's CN Tower). With "Stealing Tomorrow" and elsewhere, Dekker tends to adhere too readily to the strict verse structures dictated by the music-- to color neatly within the lines he establishes for himself, so to speak. While the man's voice, with its engaging mix of agelessness and vulnerability, is perfectly suited to the Swimmers' sound, it would be nice to hear him stretch a bit, to sometimes force the music to keep up or play counterpoint rather than consistently meeting it halfway.
Yet Channels has its share of strong lyrical moments, from the well-crafted hand-reading imagery of "Palmistry" to the firmament-breaching poetry of "Still" to the soul-searching of "River's Edge". And despite the relative "accomplished-ness" of it all, the record does offer some pleasant surprises: particularly "New Light", tucked away near the record's end, which has a crepuscular quality to it that should pique the ears of any Pinetop Seven fans out there. Altogether, Lost Channels marks a step forward for the Swimmers, one that-- along with their relentless touring (and there's no questioning the indie-ness of that)-- should be sufficient to keep their star on the rise.
